I’m becoming more and more like Bill Murray in Caddyshack. We both
wear the idiot expression quite well, and now I have a severe rodent
problem in my yard: MOLES. In case you don’t remember the movie,
Murray’s character tries unsuccessfully to rid a fancy golf course of a
pesky gopher. The gopher survives poison, flooding, and explosives, and
at the end of the movie, he celebrates his victory with a sassy little
dance to a Kenny Loggins song. Three years ago at Christmas, my
mother-in-law bought us the official dancing Caddyshack gopher doll.
It’s in my son’s room, so the impudent rodent remains at the forefront
of my mind. Thank you for that, Debbie. Until you’ve seen a mechanized
gopher doll do jazz hands, you really haven’t lived…in America.

Bill Murray and I are merging into one being.

I’ve been fighting the troublesome moles in my yard for five years
now, but I’m still foggy on the the nature of my enemy. Why do they
like my lawn and not my neighbors’? How many are there? ‘Cause the
tunnels are huge. He/she/the family/the sasquatch burrows through my
entire front yard, creating visible mounds and hidden holes, eating
plant roots, destroying grass, and making a general mess of things. The
battle has taken its toll, including me accidentally poisoning my dog.
He lived, thank goodness. I didn’t even know that he had ingested mole
poison, but I’ll never forget the aftermath. While we slept through
what must have been a horrific night for him, his bowels suddenly
released and evacuated with all the mighty power of Zeus himself. We
awoke to diarrhea anarchy. A new world order was created — one that
required us to get new carpet immediately.

The dog poisoning was an awful accident. However, if you would still
like to send hate mail, you should know that in addition to being an
incompetent dog owner, I am terrified of cats, which causes me to
despise them and mumble hate speech in their direction whenever they
come into sight. And I inadvertently killed several goldfish in an
unrelated electrocution incident several years ago. If anything, your
hate mail should be thorough.

Moles have been the root cause of the dog poisoning, the new carpet
expense, the near-death of a tree, the demise of other numerous other
plants, and a two-inch strip of sunburn that included the top part of my
butt-crack skin. (It was 100 degrees out while I was repairing mole
damage, and either I didn’t know that I was exposed, or I was enjoying
the refreshing breeze. Are you happy now?)

In past seasons, I’ve fought the moles with a half-assed effort
(haha!), much like the U.S. in Vietnam. However, my husband has put an
ultimatum on me: rid our yard of the moles, or he will call a
professional.

“NO!” I shouted when he threatened the nuclear
option. “Don’t call anyone! They will use poison and/or traps and tear
up our yard!” And I can do that myself, for FREE.